Scully should have suspected something when she had gone for a whole day without hearing from Mulder.
Mulder's forced vacation had, up to this point, almost been too good to be true. Her birthday dinner had been astonishingly pleasant considering how her birthday was usually an afterthought in Mulder's eidetic memory. The food was excellent and the setting lovely even if their conversation never strayed beyond the bounds of work. Mulder was starving for it, and she humored him.
He had called every day after that, mostly it seemed because he was terminally bored, even with his old standby of All My Children. Scully had suffered through his idyll conversation; it was familiar enough territory with him. How many times before had he been home, forced there by injury, calling because the loneliness of his apartment started to drive even him crazy.
But then he went quiet.
It didn't take long for Scully to suspect a reason why. The news that morning had been filled with the sad account of Amber Lynn LaPierre, a girl who mysteriously disappeared from her own bedroom in Sacramento. Already comparisons were being drawn to other famous, missing children cases, all with similar profiles to this one, little girls who went missing from safe homes, taken into the night and not ever seen again.
Scully could think of one case in particular, not so well known, that had dominated her life for the last seven years.
Immediately she had dialed Mulder's home phone. It went to his answering machine. She then tried his cell. It went to his voice mail. Frustrated and worried, she left a message for him on the latter, asking him to call her back. She prepared for her day, hoping that either he had missed the report all together or was simply just out of town, away from the televisions blaring Amber Lynn's brilliant smile and curly pig tails.
When Skinner called her into his office, she had a feeling that Mulder already knew and was clearly in the thick of all of this.
Her superior was frowning heavily at his own folded hands, steepled in front of him as Arlene showed her into his office. He looked up briefly over his knuckles, dark eyes clearly worried and upset behind his wireless glasses. He nodded his baldhead towards one of the chairs in front of his desk.
"Have a seat," he muttered, voice gruff as she perched onto one of the chairs. She waited patiently as he remained quiet until Arlene had closed the door firmly behind her retreating figure.
"I'm sorry to have to call you in on this, Agent Scully."
She didn't feel like beating around the bush. "Is Mulder in Sacramento?"
Skinner flushed guiltily, his mouth pursing in anger. "He was supposed to check in two hours ago."
"Perhaps he's delayed?"
"Have you tried calling his cell phone?" The question was rhetorical one. Skinner knew that she had.
"Sir," Scully began carefully. "Why is he there?"
Skinner's frown deepened, his granite jaw tightening hard. "He came to me as the case was breaking. I don't know how he heard about it. We were already planning logistics, he wanted a first crack at it."
"No offense, sir, but these sort of cases and Mulder…"
"I know." Skinner grated. "I knew and let him go out there. He seemed to have an inkling of what was happening. This case, Scully…it's a spotlight on us."
"I am aware of that, sir."
"With recent, high profile child cases, not to mention a host of other bad PR, we can't afford to screw this one up."
"Are you afraid that Mulder is going to do that?"
Skinner was at least honest enough to admit it. "You and I both know how he is. And you and I both know this isn't just about that missing little girl."
Yes, indeed she did know. She knew for Mulder it wasn't just about Amber Lynn LaPierre. It was about another little girl who had left a hole in his life from the moment she disappeared when he was twelve-years-old.
"It's been almost thirty years, Scully. I know a thing or two about carrying that sort of guilt for thirty years, and I know it's time to let go."
The burden of guilt was something she considered heavily of late. "Sir, for Mulder it isn't that simple. He believes still that his sister is out there, somewhere, hidden from him, waiting to be found."
"Taken by aliens?" There was no sneering or condescension in Skinner's tone, just sadness.
"He wants to believe that, yes. But honestly, I think he believes that because it gives him hope. It allows him to think that somehow she will come home someday." It was the one thing that kept Mulder going at this point, the one reason he fought so hard, the desire to find out the truth about his sister.
"And what if she isn't out there, Scully? What if he discovers that she's dead?"
That was a possibility that had lingered even in Scully's mind all these years. The truth was, no sign of Samantha Mulder had been seen since the night she was taken. In all likelihood, if she were somewhere out there, she might not be alive.
"I don't know, sir,' she admitted softly. "But I think he at least has the right to discover if she is, one way or the other."
Skinner sighed, dropping his hands as his heavy gaze considered the desk in front of him. "I can't have an agent out there who is using this case as an excuse to exorcise his own personal demons."
"I know, sir." She also knew what this meant. "Do you want me to go to Sacramento and get him?"
Skinner's affirmation was curt. "Arlene's already made travel arrangements, there's a flight to San Francisco in two hours and a connection to Sacramento. When you find your partner, bring him home, Scully. I don't care what progress he's made on this case, I've got to turn it over to the professionals now. I don't have a choice."
"What if he refuses to come?" That was always a strong possibility with Mulder.
"Tell him his job is done if he isn't here tomorrow morning."
"That doesn't usually seem to bother him much, sir."
Skinner knew that truth all too well. "Just get him back, Scully. Bring his report with him, I want to see if there's anything he's found, because you know damn well that the media already is suspecting the parents and frankly so are the other agents. And I can't stop them from doing their investigation."
"I know, sir." Scully rose as Skinner gave her a dismissive nod. She turned her steps to the door out of his office, but he called, stopping her as she made it to the door.
"Do you think that this will ever be a wound that will heal for Mulder?"
Scully turned and regarded her superior sadly. "Not until he reaches some sort of closure. Till then, it's just going to fester over and over again."
Skinner's sad pensiveness took her by surprise. "I would think that a friend, someone who cared for him, might help him come to terms with it. Bring it to an end."
His point wasn't lost on Scully. "Honestly, sir, I don't know if it's my place to do that. I don't know if I should."
"If not you, who else, Agent Scully?"
In that, he was right. "I will consider it, sir."
"Please do. Call me when you get to him."
"I will," she replied, slipping out the door and closing it softly behind her. Arlene quietly passed her paperwork with her travel arrangements.
"It's a shame about that little girl. So young to have something like this happen to her!"
Scully nodded absently as she looked everything through. "Yes, it is." About the same age as Samantha Mulder she realized.
"Do you think that the family will ever recover from it?"
Scully thought of the Mulders, of the toll that Samantha's disappearance and the tie it had to Bill's work had on all of their lives.
"I hope so," Scully murmured sadly. "For their sakes, I hope that they can get past this."